Entry Sixteen

Dear Diary,

I made a friend! A real, honest-to-goodness friend! Her name is Elivyre and she is a half-elf dryad who plans to open an alchemy shop in the nearby town next spring. She even has a really cool raven as a familiar, which feels gives off wicked witchy vibes. Apparently, she moved to town after hearing about how many different plants I have in my dungeon.

I hadn't originally been making any decisions regarding my dungeon with the economy in mind. However, this definitely gives me something to think about. I'll need to consider whether to specialize in a few resources or if I should go for variety instead. Twenty-five floors feels like a lot, though, so I suppose I'll have some time to think things over. Maybe that won't be the case in the long-run, but things have certainly felt slow-going right now.

Honestly, I really just feel so lucky to have stumbled upon my first friend in this world. David hasn't done anything to harm me since that one time, but he just seems so distrusting, cold, and distant. Even those like Greggory, who are very respectful and friendly, seem to fear me far to much and it makes me feel lonely. Elivyre isn't like that, though! She doesn't fight the slimes in my dungeon and she seems comfortable when she talks to me.

Other things have been progressing pretty well too. I researched a new evolution for my slimes called an aqua slime. They live in the water of the slime parkour course I made and they can traverse the water quite quickly before jumping out of it in an effort to knock adventurers into the water. To some extent, they kind of remind me of dolphins with the way they move. However, they blend in with the water entirely, making them nearly impossible to view when they are underwater.

I'm also trying to work on a camouflaged slime evolution that can blend into their environment on land, like a chameleon. While none of this makes the slimes more deadly than their basic variants, it's still fun. I suppose, it wouldn't make sense to have OP slimes on the first floor anyway. While I'm not sure I'll want to use slimes on any other floors, it is reassuring that I don't have to have a super-efficient dungeon right away. I can always readjust things or make improvements as time goes on.

When I first met Theodore, he did mention that there are certain people and monsters that threaten dungeons like mine. However, from further talks I've had with him, it seems such things are uncommon. It isn't something that would be an everyday threat that I should be panicking about, more so that I should plan for the future. Considering how I fared with the recent goblin attack, I think I understand things better now.

So long as the threats are weak like goblins, I can likely take care of them by myself, even with the minimal training I've received, thus far. However, it won't be enough for me to just leave things at that. If the dungeon were to be invaded by slightly smarter monsters or someone human, then I need something more to protect my dungeon. Things aren't hopeless, but it will definitely take some work.

Some creativity seems to go a long way, though. My slime parkour course helped my take down the goblins. A few of them started to get away, but they weren't prepared to have to jump across platforms or swim to cross the room. That allowed me to dispatch of the ones that stayed to fight before going after the others. Still, enemies simply being slowed down only does so much, I really need to have proper defenses in the dungeon.

Well, time to get back to work!

-Violet